Published 6:30 am, Thursday, December 10, 2009

Growing up in Mississippi, Zig Ziglar rarely missed a Sunday service. Even though his mother, Lila, raised him to live a life of faith, Ziglar said he wasn't truly living a godly life.

“When I was a child, racial prejudice was an ugly thing,” said Ziglar, the corporate and self-help guru and now a Texan. “But my mother knew the Bible, and she kept telling us children that we would be kind and gracious to our black brothers and sisters, and one day we would stand in front of a colorblind Lord.”

But it wasn't Ziglar's mother who ultimately got through to him.

It was an elderly black woman.

“She walked into our house one weekend talking about faith, and my lack of it,” Ziglar said. “She said, ‘God's been waiting on you a long time.' ”

That very weekend, Ziglar became a Christian. It was July 4, 1972. He was 45.

“That was the missing ingredient,” Ziglar said. “Everything changed for the better.”

Ziglar said faith in Christ helped him see that the true mark of success is something money can't buy — namely, peace of mind.

It's a message he's shared with countless people, whether it's onstage in front of thousands, on the radio and television, or through any of his 31 books.

Embrace the Struggle: Living Life on Life's Terms is Ziglar's latest book, co-written with his daughter Julie Ziglar Norman.

The first chapter, The Fall and the Future, chronicles an accidental fall that could have changed Ziglar's life forever if he had allowed it to.

But he didn't, and Ziglar, now an 83-year-old Plano resident, has plenty to say about what to do when life throws a mountain in front of you.

“I've always believed that when something happens to you that you don't like, you can either respond, which is positive, or you can react, which is negative,” Ziglar said. “If you say, ‘Oh why did this happen to me?' that doesn't do anything but make it worse. I learned early on that people don't like people who are always complaining about something.”

Despite suffering from short-term memory loss as a result of the fall, Ziglar is still writing and is still on the road.

He has simply reconfigured how to get his message out there.

During presentations, Ziglar and his daughter work the stage together. If Ziglar starts to restate an answer, she gently reminds him they have already covered that topic, and they move on.

“Traveling with Daddy has been a blessing,” Norman said. “It's not something very many children get to do at this stage in their lives. It is truly a gift from God.”

Norman said Ziglar is gifted in putting words together and expressing deep thoughts in simple ways, ways that are applicable to all facets of life, both personal and professional.

The accident, she said, only made him more real.

“I believe it has allowed him to influence people in a different way because he isn't living this life that is perfect. He does have struggles, and he is showing them how he deals with it,” Norman said. “They can't say, ‘Of course he's happy and positive, because everything is going his way.' Instead they see him applying everything he has taught all these years to his own life.”

Ziglar has had his share of trials, tribulations and tragedies.

As a boy, it was hardship and the death of his youngest sister. As a newlywed, it was financial struggles. And then he lost one of his daughters to pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease.

Ziglar had to reach deep for his faith and recall life lessons his mother taught him.

“She only had a fifth-grade education, but she was very wise,” Ziglar said. “She always taught her children — I'm the 10th of 12 — that when things happen, you can still move forward, and I've always been so blessed with that.”